I still don't think anything beats an AMD reference design but these sure do come close. They are classy in the same sort of way which is how I like my graphics cards. Not a fan of huge ricey looking heatsinks. Understated and elegant is what I like. You'd think being gold these would look bad but they actually pull it off.

I still don't think anything beats an AMD reference design but these sure do come close. They are classy in the same sort of way which is how I like my graphics cards. Not a fan of huge ricey looking heatsinks. Understated and elegant is what I like. You'd think being gold these would look bad but they actually pull it off.
Nice cards for sure.

This.

Reference cards IMO always look better to me than 3rd party designs. It's just the sleek professional look I prefer. Not to say these look bad.

I wish they'd go back to the fans used in the Twin Frozr II design... TFII is my favorite (factory) aftermarket cooler to date
On the subject of reference cards... I hate 95% of turbine designs. GTX 680 is tolerable and HIS's IceQ is pretty nice (Non-reference of course, but it's still a turbine).

As far as reference cards go I like Nvidia designs as well but since the 5k series I don't think anyone has had as pretty a reference design as AMD. Sleek and understated is how I like all my stuff. I'm not taking cooling performance into account I'm talking only about looks. I think cards like the DCU2 and the big phantom cards are awful looking. Those IceQ cards are some of the worst IMO but to each his own.

Don't know man it looks pretty awesome to me. I could see not liking the square shape but that has changed since then. 7970 is super curvy. I don't know how you could look at a Twin Frozr card and say it's more understated then these two cards.